274 



DEER- STALKING IN KASHMIR. 



WHO will ever forget the occasion when he 

 first heard a stag's roar ? What a thrill the 

 sound gave him, and how his blood went racing 

 with the knowledge of the beast's mere prox- 

 imity ! Life seemed eminently liveable at that 

 moment. Even the first view of a stag scarcely 

 affords so unalloyed a pleasure for who is there 

 among us that will not confess to at least a 

 qualm at that crisis in his life as to how he will 

 acquit himself, when the rifle has to be held in 

 hands that do not shake, and the trigger pressed 

 with a finger that does not convulsively indicate 

 the state of his nerves? Again, the first stag 

 one sees may be, probably is, a small one ; but 

 the first roar, so loud, so deep, one can never 

 conceive issuing from any but the throat of a 

 monarch. Such, at least, was my conviction as 

 I rode one September evening up to my tent 

 below the Tral Forest, and heard the weird sounds 

 come stealing down from the wooded mountains 



